Nicolay, Oral History Michael Burlingame, ed., An Oral History of Abraham Lincoln: John G. Nicolay’s Interviews and Essays (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996)
RWAL Don E. Fehrenbacher and Virginia Fehrenbacher, comps. and eds., Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996)
Preface
HI, pp. 161, 438, 706.
HI, pp. 438, 724.
Allen C. Guelzo, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdman’s, 1999), makes this case most compellingly. Guelzo’s Whiggish Lincoln is anticipated in Gabor S. Boritt, Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream (Memphis: Memphis State University Press, 1978), and Daniel Walker Howe, The Political Culture of the American Whigs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), pp. 363–98.
1. Inner Power (1809–54)
Michael Burlingame, The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), pp. 236–37.
HI, p. 57; CW, 3:511; N&H, 1:77.
Donald, p. 20.
CW, 2:97.
CW, 4:65.
N&H 1:36.
CW, 2:15–16, 81, 111, 4:121; N&H, 1:301–3.
CW, 1:5–9.
CW, 3:512; N&H, 1:107–8.
CW, 4:65.
Herndon believed Lincoln’s national political aspirations “grew and bloomed and developed into beauty, etc., in the year 1840 exactly. Mr. Lincoln told me that his ideas of something burst in him in 1840.” Gabor S. Boritt, Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream (Memphis: Memphis State University Press, 1978), p. 78.
CW, 1:307, 319–21.
CW, 1:350.
Donald W. Riddle, Lincoln Runs for Congress (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1948), p. 111.
CW, 1:350–51; Riddle, Lincoln Runs for Congress, pp. 102–11.
CW, 1:391, 430–31.
CW, 2:382–83, 3:512, 4:67; Donald, pp. 160–61; Burlingame, Inner World, p. 4.
Daniel Walker Howe, The Political Culture of the American Whigs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), p. 265; Burlingame, Inner World, pp. 255–57; CW, 1:8.
CW, 2:220–21.
CW, 1:5–9.
Herndon’s Lincoln, p. 156.
CW, 1:144, 148, 200–1.
CW, 1:65–66, 69.
Joseph Gillespie, quoted in N&H, 1:158–62.
Paul Simon, Lincoln’s Preparation for Greatness: The Illinois Legislative Years (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965; rept. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971), pp. 263–64; Boritt, Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream, pp. 56–57; CW, 1:159–79, 237–38.
CW, 1:309–13, 334–35.
CW, 1:334, 407–16; Donald, p. 110; Olivier Frayssé, Lincoln, Land, and Labor, 1809–1860, trans. Sylvia Neely (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), p. 101.
CW, 1:320.
CW, 1:271–79, 291–97; Herndon’s Lincoln, pp. 206–7.
CW, 1:74–75; emphasis added (“promulgation”).
CW, 1:260, 2:320, 4:62, 7:281; Burlingame, Inner World, p. 25; HI, pp. 457.
Ward Hill Lamon, Recollections of Lincoln, 1847–1865, ed. Dorothy Lamon Teillard (Lincoln, NB: Bison Books, 1994; rept. from the 2nd ed. of 1911), p. 15.
The words of the Whig-supported Ashmun amendment. Donald W. Riddle, Congressman Abraham Lincoln (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979), pp. 1, 42.
CW, 1:420–22, 431–42, 457; 2:4.
CW, 1:347–48.
CW, 2:20–22; Giddings’s diary, 11 Jan. 1849, in N&H, 1:286.
HI, p. 183; CW, 2:130.
CW, 2:131–32.
CW, 1:108, 347; 2:62, 115–16, 126, 222.
CW, 2:226–27; 3:551–52.
This is the implication of Riddle, Congressman Abraham Lincoln, pp. 246–49.
N&H, 1:376.
CW, 2:247–83.
Burlingame, Inner World, pp. 1–56.
HI, pp. 183–84, 499, 507.
Bacon wrote: “If those laws of the southern states, by virtue of which slavery exists there, and is what it is, are not wrong—nothing is wrong.” His uncle taught in Springfield. Leonard Bacon, Slavery Discussed in Occasional Essays, from 1833 to 1846 (New York, 1846), p. x; Theodore Davenport Bacon, Leonard Bacon: A Statesman in the Church (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1931), pp. 269–73.
HI, p. 348.
William E. Barton, The Soul of Abraham Lincoln (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1920), pp. 225–43.
HI, pp. 156, 441, 476, 505, 521, 576–77.
HI, pp. 107, 215, 233, 455; Allen C. Guelzo, “Abraham Lincoln and the Doctrine of Necessity,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 18, no. 1 (Winter 1997), pp. 66–67.
William J. Wolf, The Almost Chosen People: A Study of the Religion of Abraham Lincoln (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959), pp. 50–51, 74–75; RWAL, p. 457.
HI, pp. 37, 40–41, 76, 106–7, 499.
HI, p. 573 (spelling corrected). Lincoln’s text was Luke 17:37.
HI, p. 106; Douglas L. Wilson, Honor’s Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), pp. 73–80. Burns’s poem includes the stanza: “O Thou that in the Heavens does dwell, / Wha, as it pleases best Thysel, / Sens ane to Heaven an’ ten to Hell / A’ for Thy glory, / And no for onie guid or ill / They’ve done before Thee!”
HI, pp. 24, 61–62, 432, 441, 472, 576–77; Walter B. Stevens, A Reporter’s Lincoln, ed. Michael Burlingame (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), pp. 11–12; Wilson, Honor’s Voice, pp. 81–83. Matheny subsequently retracted some of his statements, but not those relating to Lincoln’s religion in his younger days. Barton, Soul of Abraham Lincoln, pp. 320–21.
HI, p. 441. Fehrenbacher casts doubt on Cogdal’s reliability. RWAL, pp. 110–11.
HI, p. 549; Herndon’s Lincoln, p. 354.
HI, pp. 516, 547; Barton, Soul of Abraham Lincoln, pp. 324, 348–49.
CW, 2:97.
Stevens, A Reporter’s Lincoln, p. 12.
HI, pp. 578–80.
HI, pp. 360, 464, 524, 576.
Nicolay, Oral History, pp. 95–96; HI, pp. 167–68, 358, 360, 453, 516.
Isaac N. Arnold, The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Chicago: McClurg & Company, 1884), p. 81; HI, pp. 185, 358, 360, 426; Emanuel Hertz, The Hidden Lincoln: From the Letters and Papers of William H. Herndon (New York: Blue Ribbon Books, 1940), p. 167.
HI, p. 441; Hertz, The Hidden Lincoln, pp. 142, 167–68, 265–66, 407–8; CW, 1:382; Guelzo, “Abraham Lincoln and the Doctrine of Necessity,” pp. 57–81.
CW, 2:544–47.
Herndon’s Lincoln, p. 360; CW, 3:204–5. Ross had, in fact, freed his slaves.
CW, 1:411–12 (Genesis 3:19).
CW, 3:479–80; HI, pp. 183–84, 441.
HI, pp. 162, 167–68, 441.
CW, 3:205; Hertz, The Hidden Lincoln, p. 266.
Hertz, The Hidden Lincoln, pp. 265–67; HI, pp. 162, 506; CW, 1:289.
Guelzo, “Abraham Lincoln and the Doctrine of Necessity,” p. 79.
2. The Power of Opinion (1854–58)
Historians of the evolution of American party competition have designated the conflict between Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans the “first party system.” Jacksonians and their National Republican/Whig opponents provided the poles of party politics from the late 1820s to the early 1850s. The “third party system,” in which Democrats confronted Republicans, evolved out of the multiple fracturing of parties in the 1850s.
CW, 2:89, 255–56, 552–53.
CW, 1:48, 108–15.
N&H, 1:233–34, 250, 269–74, 293–94; CW 1:337–38, 471–73, 2:409; Olivier Frayssé, Lincoln, Land, and Labor, 1809–1860, trans. Sylvia Neely (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), pp. 84–85, 173; Mark M. Krug, Lyman Trumbull: Conservative Radical (New York: A. S. Barnes, 1965), p. 171; Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, 3 vols. (New York: The McClure Co., 1907–8), 2:99, 199–200, 205.
HI, pp. 91, 193, 348, 508, 539; N&H, 1:304–9.
HI, p. 588;
Waldo W. Braden, Abraham Lincoln: Public Speaker (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988), pp. 108, 201–2, 616, 727; N&H, 1:79–81, 84, 87–95, 172.
N&H, 1:69–71, 167–69; HI, pp. 69, 76, 114, 466, 508.
N&H, 1:304–9; HI, pp. 76, 91, 465–66, 539.
Braden, Abraham Lincoln: Public Speaker, pp. 16–17, 97–99, 107; Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, 2:93; N&H, 1:304–9.
HI, pp. 131–32, 508, 683.
CW, 2:126; N&H, 1:303–9; Braden, Abraham Lincoln: Public Speaker, pp. 113, 115; HI, p. 508; Daniel Walker Howe, The Political Culture of the American Whigs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), pp. 281–85.
N&H, 1:130–31, 173–77, 182–83, 223.
Thomas Ford, A History of Illinois from Its Commencement as a State in 1818 to 1847 (Chicago, 1854), pp. 279–82.
Joseph Gillespie, Recollections of Early Illinois and Her Noted Men (Chicago, 1880), p. 6; Ford, A History of Illinois, p. 105.
Clinton L. Conkling, “Historical Data Concerning the Second Presbyterian Church of Springfield, Illinois,” typescript, 3 vols., Illinois State Historical Society, 1:133–41, 176–79, 3:8–22; Newton Bateman and Paul Selby, eds., Illinois Historical (Chicago, 1910), p. 215; John M. Palmer, Personal Recollections of John M. Palmer: The Story of an Earnest Life (Cincinnati, 1901), pp. 48–51; Biographical sketch of N. W. Miner; Mary Hill Miner, “Recollections,” Mary Hill Miner Papers, Illinois State Historical Society.
CW, 1:382–84.
CW, 1:319–21; Harry C. Blair and Rebecca Tarshis, Lincoln’s Constant Ally: The Life of Colonel Edward D. Baker (Portland: Oregon Historical Society, 1960), pp. 8–9.
William J. Wolf, The Almost Chosen People: A Study of the Religion of Abraham Lincoln (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959), pp. 59–62, 69–70.
CW, 1:320.
In central Illinois, John M. Palmer later recalled, “religious controversies raged in every neighborhood to an extent that seemed to me to be absolutely unaccountable.” Like Lincoln, Palmer was born in Kentucky and moved to Illinois in the 1830s. Palmer, Personal Recollections, p. 13.
N&H, 1:126.
N&H, 1:370–72; CW, 2:282.
HI, p. 266.
William E. Gienapp, The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852–1856 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 122 (quoting the Chicago Tribune).
CW, 2:273–74.
Krug, Lyman Trumbull, pp. 86–88; Edward Magdol, Owen Lovejoy: Abolitionist in Congress (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1967), pp. 109–13; CW, 2:288.
CW, 2:228; Krug, Lyman Trumbull, pp. 89–93.
CW, 2:323.
Magdol, Owen Lovejoy, pp. 119–20; Willard L. King, Lincoln’s Manager: David Davis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960), pp. 107–8.
CW, 2:316, 322–23.
CW, 2:321.
Stephen L. Hansen, The Making of the Third Party System: Voters and Parties in Illinois, 1850–1876 (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1980), p. 78.
Herndon’s Lincoln, pp. 312–13.
CW, 2:276, 281–82.
CW, 2:358, 374.
CW, 2:412–13.
Donald, p. 200.
CW, 2:399–407.
CW, 2:405–9.
CW, 2:430; Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, 2:87–88.
Don E. Fehrenbacher, Chicago Giant: A Biography of Long John Wentworth (Madison, WI: American History Research Center, 1957), pp. 148–59.
Don E. Fehrenbacher, Prelude to Greatness: Lincoln in the 1850’s (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962), p. 101.
CW, 3:310–11.
CW, 2:461–62.
CW, 2:462–67.
HI, p. 731.
CW, 2:491; Donald, pp. 209–10.
CW, 3:16, 145–46.
CW, 2:501, 3:399.
J. Medill to AL, 27 Aug. 1858, ALP.
According to Governor James Grimes of Iowa, Lincoln mapped out this new debating strategy following their discussions just a few days before the meeting at Quincy. HI, pp. 377–78.
CW, 3:226, 234, 311–13.
CW, 2:545–47, 3:220–22, 249, 280, 301–4.
CW, 3:254–55, 276, 307–8.
CW, 3:315.
CW, 3:225–26.
N&H, 2:123–24; CW, 3:225–26, 256, 315.
CW, 3:233, 256, 276, 314–16; Harold Holzer, ed., The Lincoln-Douglas Debates: The First Complete Unexpurgated Text (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), p. 311.
CW, 3:234, 254, 310–12, 315–16.
Lincoln told Gillespie the campaign “was too grave & serious” for folksy anecdotes. HI, p. 181.
CW, 2:501, 546–47.
Lincoln continued to emphasize the dangers after the election. The issue was for him much more than one of electoral convenience. CW, 3:344–45.
RWAL, p. 303.
Linda Jeanne Evans, “Abolitionism in the Illinois Churches, 1830–1865” (Northwestern University, Ph.D. thesis, 1981), p. 111.
Evans, “Abolitionism in the Illinois Churches,” pp. 155–56, 175, 329–30.
Jasper Douthit, Jasper Douthit’s Story: The Autobiography of a Pioneer (Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1909), pp. 92–94.
HI, pp. 259, 654; Phineas L. Windsor, “A Central Illinois Methodist Minister, 1857–1891”; unpublished lecture, March 1944, Holbrook Library, Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley, p. 8; Minutes of the Annual Conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church, for the Year 1858 (New York), p. 249; A. Smith to AL, 20 July 1858, J. H. Jordan to AL, 25 July 1858, ALP.
A. Smith to AL, 20 July 1858, ALP; Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, 2:93–96; Windsor, “A Central Illinois Methodist Minister,” pp. 7–8; HI, pp. 4–5, 716, 728; Walter B. Stevens, A Reporter’s Lincoln, ed., Michael Burlingame (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), pp. 89, 229; Douthit, Autobiography, pp. 47–48.
CW, 3:255, 257, 313, 316; HI, pp. 574–75, 654; Stevens, A Reporter’s Lincoln, p. 86.
The Republicans won a total of 125,430 votes statewide, the Douglas Democrats 121,609, and the Buchanan Democrats 5,071.
CW, 2:483–84, 3:305, 335–36, 339; N&H, 2:138–43.
CW, 3:339; David Zarefsky, Lincoln, Douglas, and Slavery: In the Crucible of Public Debate (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), p. 206.
DJH, p. 244; CW, 3:336–37, 339–42.
3. The Power of Party (1858–60)
CW, 3:460–62.
CW, 1:454.
Illinois put Lincoln’s name forward; he won support in eleven states, from Maine to California.
CW, 2:506; N&H, 2:176–83; William E. Baringer, Lincoln’s Rise to Power (Boston: Little, Brown, 1937), pp. 42–43; RWAL, p. 154.
CW, 3:355–56, 377, 395; HI, p. 365.
CW, 3:399–400.
CW, 3:378–79, 387–88.
CW, 3:345, 405.
CW, 3:365–70, 405, 423–25.
CW, 3:365–70.
CW, 3:384, 386, 390–91, 394.
CW, 3:389–91.
CW, 3:503.
CW, 3:496, 502.
CW, 3:491; Baringer, Lincoln’s Rise to Power, pp. 117–21.
CW, 3:341, 510–12; N&H, 2:183–85; Baringer, Lincoln’s Rise to Power, pp. 127–28.
N&H, 2:216–25.
CW, 3:522–50.
N&H, 2:216–25; Baringer, Lincoln’s Rise to Power, pp. 153–64; CW, 3:555; Herndon’s Lincoln, p. 369.
Don E. Fehrenbacher, Chicago Giant: A Biography of Long John Wentworth (Madison, WI: American History Research Center, 1957), pp. 148–49, 162–70; Mark M. Krug, Lyman Trumbull: Conservative Radical (New York: A. S. Barnes, 1965), pp. 100, 157.
Willard L. King, Lincoln’s Manager: David Davis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960), p. 132; CW, 3:507–8.
King, David Davis, p. 133; Donald, p. 242; Central Illinois Gazette (i.e., William O. Stoddard), 7 Dec. 1859, in Baringer, Lincoln’s Rise to Power, pp. 130–31; CW, 3:509.
HI, p. 247; CW, 3:517.
Baringer, Lincoln’s Rise to Power, pp. 145, 149; Herndon’s Lincoln, pp. 369–70; CW, 4:
33, 43, 45.
HI, pp. 462–63; Baringer, Lincoln’s Rise to Power, pp. 180–85.
HI, p. 463; CW, 4:48. The banner writer was in error: it was John, not Thomas, Hanks who split the rails.
HI, p. 463.
A. K. McClure, Abraham Lincoln and Men of War Times (Philadelphia: Times Publishing Co., 1892), p. 23; Baringer, Lincoln’s Rise to Power, pp. 186–87.
HI, p. 683.
Baringer, Lincoln’s Rise to Power, pp. 192, 322–23; Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, 3 vols. (New York: McClure Co., 1907–8), 2:176–79, 184.
Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, 2:169–72, 184–87; Robert Cook, Baptism of Fire: The Republican Party in Iowa, 1838–1878 (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1994), p. 124.
Baringer, Lincoln’s Rise to Power, p. 172. Lincoln played up the issue of McLean’s age and noted the possible complications following from his resignation from the U.S. Supreme Court either before or after an election campaign. CW, 4:46.
Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, 2:175.
Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 208.
CW, 3:380, 383.
CW, 3:512.
CW, 4:34, 47–48.
Donald, p. 246.
King, David Davis, pp. 136–38; McClure, Lincoln and Men of War Times, pp. 78–79; HI, p. 677.
HI, pp. 683–84; King, David Davis, pp. 136–38.
Baringer, Lincoln’s Rise to Power, p. 219; N&H, 2:262–69; King, David Davis, pp. 139–41.
The Italian revolutionary patriot Count Felice de Orsini had attempted to assassinate Napoleon III of France by exploding bombs in Paris in 1858.
HI, pp. 490–92.
Baringer, Lincoln’s Rise to Power, p. 288; N&H, 2:277–78; HI, p. 677.
CW, 4:50; Baringer, Lincoln’s Rise to Power, p. 303.
Baringer, Lincoln’s Rise to Power, p. 313; Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, 2:188.
Howard K. Beale, The Diary of Edward Bates [“Volume IV of the Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1930”] (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1933), pp. 132, 136; Marvin R. Cain, Lincoln’s Attorney General: Edward Bates of Missouri (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1965), p. 116; William B. Hesseltine, Lincoln and the War Governors (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1955), p. 65; King, David Davis, pp. 144–45.
The words were McClure’s, who knew about these things. McClure, Lincoln and Men of War Times, p. 22.
Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power Page 45
